Meet LiFi - It's 100x Faster Than WiFi

Published November 24th at 12:00am

You would be forgiven for not having heard of LiFi before; it’s a very new technology that has only just begun its real-world testing phase. Essentially, it’s a new form of high speed data technology that makes WiFi look so slow it’s almost stationary. In early field trials LiFi has been able to reach transfer speeds of 1GB per second - that’s 100x faster than your WiFI speed. It’s a technology that could dramatically change how we use the internet.

LiFi works by transferring data through visible light communication (VLC), a medium that uses light to transmit data and signals in much the same way as WiFi uses radio. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Oxford managed to achieve bi-directional speeds of 224 gigabits per second (Gbps) using VLC technology in the lab. To put this in perspective, this kind of internet speed would mean you could download 18 movies at 1.5gb in under a second.

Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh first invented VLC in 2011 when he demonstrated that by flickering the light from a single LED, he could transmit far more data than a conventional cellular tower. It’s essentially an extremely fast version of morse code-come-binary, but instead of dashes and dots you have light on (1) light off (0).

This direct form of data transfer is not only beneficial due to the significantly faster speeds; it’s also a great deal more secure than conventional WiFi - for the simple fact that light cannot pass through walls. It’s looking unlikely that LiFi will be taking over as the industry standard for some time - that would require ripping out all the infrastructure currently in place for WiFi. However, the two could be used in tandem to boost efficiency in almost all environments.

It’s inventor, Haas, believes that LiFi chips can be fitted to conventional light bulbs to act as routers; "All we need to do is fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device and this would then combine two basic functionalities: illumination and wireless data transmission," Haas said. "In the future we will not only have 14 billion light bulbs, we may have 14 billion LiFis deployed worldwide for a cleaner, greener, and even brighter future."

The disruptive technology is predicted to see significant uptake in the smart building of the future. While smart building research company, Memoori, predict only 4.7% of the building automation systems market will be taken by lighting controls between 2015 and 2020, lighting controls will account for 19% of new IP connected projects. LiFi has the potential to dominate this area as a critical integrator in smart building technologies. There is significant demand for lighting controls to be integrated with Building Environment Control Systems (BECS), for example, using optical sensory networks to transmit data through light.